'Sure.'
'We don't want any of that new mob asking questions. If they see you talking to her, it's just going to look like you're trying to get a shag. They might start questioning it if they think I'm sniffing around.'
'You think there are people on the Edinburgh police force who assume that I spend my entire life trying to get laid?'
'Sergeant, there are police officers in Bandar Seri Begawan who think you spend your entire life trying to get laid.'
Funny. Nice thought, though.
'So, do we have some sort of code?' I ask. 'Is she going to leave a flowerpot on the balcony?'
He turns away from the computer and looks at me like I'm some sort of ridiculous police freak with no clue. I get that look from him a lot, although it is at least contradicted by the fact that he wanted me here in the first place.
'You're meeting her in the Costa down the road at 7.'
'Oh. Right.'
'You'll be talking about work,' he says, giving me the look.
'She's way too serious for me,' I say.
'Bollocks,' he mutters, shaking his head and looking back at the monitor. 'Too serious... You'd have sex with a four-thousand-page essay on 17th century Scottish agriculture if it'd let you.'
I'VE GOT AN AMERICANO. I asked for space for extra milk and still had to give it back to them so they could tip some of it out to allow space for extra milk. It's like their mission statement is We Will Burn Your Lips The Fuck Off. DI Gostkowski is drinking mint tea with delicate little sips.
'What d'you do all day?' she asks.
'You're on our side, right?'
She smiles.
'Despite what all you strapping men think, it's not a competition. Nevertheless, I've been instructed by the Superintendent only to pass back the information that he authorises me to. So, your secrets are safe with me.'
'We went looking for possible woods that the killer might use the next time.'
She pauses, the cup at her lips, then sets it back down without taking anything from it.
'You looked for trees? In Scotland?'
'Yes.'
'Did you find any?'
'Funny.'
'Seriously? There have to be a million places that this guy could use...'
'We narrowed it down to around nine hundred or so... Well, you know, in the vicinity. And then, you know, some of them are going to have nests and very obvious crow communities, and those are the ones that we can concentrate on. Shouldn't be so many in the end.'
It seemed pretty lame as we went about our business this afternoon. Now, explaining it to another polis, it sounds flat out stupid, despite my best attempts at justification.
She takes her next sip, bit of a longer drink this time as it's cooled down enough. Finally makes some kind of 'well, I suppose you have to do something' expression with her face.
'What are the Bat-team up to?' I ask to get us off the subject. Don't want to loiter over the possibility that two senior detectives spent their day chasing their own bollocks.
'I don't suppose what they did amounted to much more. Spent the day familiarising themselves with the investigation. I can't say that they had anything new to add at this stage. Seem like a sharp enough bunch.'
'Full of themselves or aware that they're stepping on toes?'
'Oh...' she begins, and then thinks about it. At least, she's thinking about how to put it, rather than thinking about whether or not these people might actually be in danger of disappearing up the arsehole of their own self-importance.
'They're confident,' she says eventually.
'Good. Confidence is important.'
She smiles a little at that. We glance at each other, then let our eyes drift around the café. These places are just permanently busy nowadays. Everybody's drinking coffee. Even the people who are going to go and get pissed later, still have a coffee first.
Maybe I'm just making that shit up. What do I know?
'So, have you got anything for us?' I ask.
Quick shake of the head, and she looks slightly abashed. This will, presumably, become a nightly thing, and it's going to get a little awkward if she has nothing to say every day.
'Like I said, they were getting their feet under the desk. They spent the day asking questions. Tomorrow, I suppose, we'll find out if they've got anything new to bring to the table.'
We hold each other's eyes for a moment, then she looks at her watch.
'Gotta go,' she says and takes a last quick sip of tea. Her phone has been sitting unlooked at on the table, and she lifts it and puts it in her pocket as she stands. 'Same time tomorrow, Sergeant?'
'Sure,' I say, which doesn't sound like much, but is better than all the innuendo that immediately came to mind.
'Right. I'll be in touch if there's anything I think you should know before then,' she says, and then she's off, back out the door and onto the street, leaving me alone with a half-drunk Americano with a little too much milk.
I watch her across the street. Can't quite see the entrance to the station from where I'm sitting, but keep following her until she's out of sight. Then I turn back to my coffee and take a long drink.
Check my phone. No messages. 7:17. Ought to be getting back to work. Wonder how it went with Taylor explaining to Connor that we set out on a two-man mission to search every wood in Scotland.
Hopefully he lied. That's what I would have done.
14
Already dark.
The policeman, the journalist the social worker; the tailor, the baker, the candlestick maker.
The lucky three.
Police Constable Morgan. Lives on the outskirts of Dundee, works in Perth. Single, no kids. Has been friends with his killer online for nearly a year, although all this time has known the Plague of Crows as a twenty-seven-year-old woman named Dulcie.
Linette Grey. Lives in Bankfoot, works on the front line of social services in Perth. Single, no kids. Spends her days visiting families who hurt each other. Three-year-olds still in nappies who are never fed or changed, six-year-old children given alcohol and cigarettes and not much else, drug addicts, wife-beaters, husband abusers, child abusers. She deals with the police often; a couple of times it has been Constable Morgan. But just a couple, which isn't many, given the number of years she's been doing the job. The police, however, when it comes to looking for a connection between the victims, are at least going to be able to find one, and it will lead them off in entirely the wrong direction.
Malcolm Morrison. Lives in the centre of Perth in a modern, chic apartment. Small, but perfect for impressing women. Single, no kids. Works for the Dundee Courier & Advertiser. Fancies himself for a job on one of the big London tabloids, but there is plenty of time. For the moment he's compiling an interesting body of work. Some people might consider that they'd suffered by his hands along the way, but they could live with it. Or not. Has been friends with his killer online for nearly a year, although all this time has known the Plague of Crows as a twenty-seven-year-old woman named Dulcie.
Dulcie has a lot of friends. Dulcie knows how to cover her tracks.
Linette Grey awakens to find herself in a small clearing in the middle of a wood. She feels cold. It takes her some time to sort out all the sensations in her head. The cold. The fact that she can't move any part of her body. The low hills above the tree line. The two men strapped to chairs less than a couple of yards away. The fact that she recognises one of them but can't remember who it is. The fact that the one who isn't strapped down, the other person in the clearing doing something to the head of one of the men, she doesn't recognise at all. The fact that when she realises what's happening, and she tries to scream, no sound comes out.
From somewhere overhead comes the loud squawk of a crow. She can't compute that either. She tries to scream again.
They are in a small wood, about a mile from the A85 between Perth and Crieff. Even if she had been able to scream, no one would have heard, but the Plague of Crows doesn't like to take chances.
>
15
Worked until just after eleven, reviewing everything we have on the case, looking over all the potential murder sites trying to make some sort of informed guess about where we should check next, then home to a late supper and crawling into bed – on my own – about one. Started thinking about Gostkowski late in the evening and wondered if we might bump into each other at the cigarette hole, but it didn't happen.
Home alone, late, two nights in a row. Not about to end either, is it? We're no nearer catching this bloke or having even the faintest idea who it is. Long, late nights stretching immeasurably into the future. Jesus.
Slept all right, got to the station just before eight. Still have that feeling that I'm last to arrive. Feel everyone looking at me, like where the fuck have you been, don't you know there's a war on?
I stop, look around. I'm imagining it. Most of our lot aren't involved in the war, and they don't give a shit that I wasn't at my desk by 6 a.m. They're like soldiers, trained and armed to the teeth, dispatched into the war zone, and then told, nah, don't bother, these other guys are going to do the fighting, you lot go and jerk off in the corner.
Since the Leander business I've got it in my head that they're all wary of me, all looking at me. I'm thinking it's about me. The disease of conceit, as Bob says. Despite having been here for more years than I want to remember, I'm just not one of them. They don't give a shit about me, I don't give a shit about them.
Straight to Taylor's office. No point in even going to my desk. Ramsay at the front desk has been instructed not to send anything new my way. The endless piles of crap that are sitting there and have been waiting for weeks or months, can continue to sit and wait.
Shit day outside, low cloud, miserable. It's not been light for long, and it's one of those days when it'll never be anything other than gloomy as all fuck. The grey light of dawn will merge horribly into the grey light of morning and afternoon.
'Morning.'
Taylor glances up from a map and grunts.
'Made it in, then,' he says.
I'll ignore that.
'What's the plan?'
He waves a hand which I take to mean that he wants the door closed, then I pull up a seat across the desk.
'You go your way and I go mine?' I say.
He looks up. 'You're not going to start singing are you?'
He doesn't seem particularly chipper.
'Not get much sleep?' I ask.
He looks up again, the angry frown still on his face, then a moment of self-realisation kicks in and he shakes his head.
'No,' he says. 'Not much.'
He gets wrapped up in this shit. When he's given a job – I mean, a good job, an interesting job, one where peoples' lives are at stake – he throws himself into it. I'm still doing it because it's what I do, in the way that I breathe and eat and go to the bathroom. There's no option. Taylor has a social conscience, which frankly I find absurd. Most of the fucking public don't deserve to be watched over.
'Thought of anything else we could be doing?' he asks.
'What?'
'That'll be a no then.'
'You've been on this for three months,' I say.
'It changed two days ago,' he replies. 'And all we've thought of in those two days is this wild goose chase. Jesus.'
He shakes his head, sits back. Looks across the desk. I get the feeling that it's the first time he's looked away from one of these maps in about fourteen hours. At least he's not wearing the same shirt he was wearing when I saw him last night, so he must have been home for a little while.
'You've been on this for three months,' I say again. 'The only thing that's changed is that we're pretty sure he's going to repeat. Apart from getting ahead of the game, what else can we do? We could try contacting every police officer, journalist and social services bod in Scotland to make sure they're not currently getting their brains eaten out by a bunch of ravenous birds, but holy fuck, you know we can't. Even if we weren't working under these preposterous circumstances.'
Hands across his face. The usual gesture. However much sleep he got, it wasn't enough.
'We need to spend at least one more day doing what we did yesterday,' I say. 'Get a feel for the places, the kind of area he might be inclined to use. You must be getting that already. Sure there are hundreds of wooded areas, but then you go to them, and you realise, he's never going to do the kind of thing he does right here. You realise that it must be somewhere else. Then, every now and again you think, wait a minute, this would be perfect.'
He's staring at me. You can see him almost fighting internally on whether or not he's going to allow himself to be dragged out of his moment of temporary despair.
'Coffee shop,' I say. 'Thirty minutes, chew the fat of the case, then head off. If nothing else, we get to sit in our respective cars and listen to Bob.'
Big sigh.
'Fuck,' he says.
I stand up.
'Come on, shift your arse,' I say.
Not terribly respectful, but you have to judge your moment.
'Fine,' he says, and he stands and grabs his coat from the back of his chair.
We walk out together. Since I'm in one of my rare moments of not believing that the entire world revolves around me, I don't presume that everyone is looking at us, thinking, where the fuck are they going now?
'What you listening to at the moment?' I ask, as we head outside and start walking down the street. Light drizzle in the air. You know, the soaking, horrible kind.
He doesn't immediately reply.
'I'm still on a Together Through Life kick,' I say. 'Been listening to it all week.' Of course, he knows that, as he had to listen to it on the way out to Aberfoyle. And back.
He grunts. Give him a glance.
'Been listening to Adele,' he says, his voice low.
What the actual fuck?
I give him the appropriate look.
'What the actual fuck?' I say.
'You just hear it so much. Quite catchy. Thought I'd give it a go.'
Feel a weird, genuine sense of revulsion. Like cockroaches crawling over my skin. Like finding out your wife's a man. Like Scotland getting beaten 1-0 by Andorra.
'What? I mean, seriously? You can't listen to that. Jesus.'
'It's just... you know, bugger off, Sergeant, I can listen to something other than Bob for once. He won't mind.'
'Fine, listen to something other than Bob, but for God's sake, make it Leonard Cohen or, if you must be populist, Springsteen maybe. But fucking Adele? Seriously. What are you? You're like, fifty-something aren't you? And a man. You're a man in his 50s.'
'Fuck off, Sergeant.'
'She's a chav, 'n' all. We'd probably arrest her given the chance.'
'Sergeant, shut the fuck up,' he says as we reach the café. 'I've been listening to it for a few weeks, but out of respect to you, not when you've been in the car. But you're on warning. Some respect for your senior officer, or I'll play it every time you're in the fucking motor.'
Holy Jesus. He sits down and I head to the counter to place the order. Don't think it's too much to say that my faith in my fellow man – which was already on a very shaky peg – has just been shafted that little bit more.
16
Headed up the Clyde valley, past the garden centres and the old people out for their morning cup of tea. Plenty of available spots out here for your demented killer to murder someone in the woods. This whole section is the kind of area that just makes our task look impossible.
There are, actually, huge chunks of the country that can be ignored. All those swathes of open farmland and moor with neatly planted forests stuck in the middle. Populated and built up areas. Lots of them. But areas like the Clyde valley, roads snaking up the length of the river, towns and villages and individual homes strung out, patches of wood all over the place. This is the kind of place I'd go for if it was me.
It happens to me the third patch of wood that I stop beside. Up past Larkhall, to the west of the river.
Up a slight hill from the road. Park the car on the verge, still sticking out a little, so turn the hazards on.
Over the brow of the hill, the wood stretches away far enough that I can't see where it ends, although I've already got a decent idea from the map. Don't know enough about trees to know what we have here. Most of them have shed; there are a few conifers around. It's an old wood, a naturally occurring wood. Almost seems odd that it hasn't been turned into a turnip field or an extraordinary development of four-bedroomed homes for the young professional.
Head towards what I think will be the middle of it. Away from the noise of the road, a sound that dimmed naturally as soon as I got over the brow of the hill. Looking all around me. A few birds in the trees, a few nests up above, but not yet that cluster of large crows' nests that we're looking for.
I reach the heart of the forest. It might be further still to the other side, to the border with farmland, but I get to the point where I can't see my way out. The forest isn't too dense, but there's enough of it that the perimeter and what lies beyond is lost. And two things happen.
Firstly, I get an all-encompassing feeling of utter hopelessness and dejection. What is the point? So, I'm in a wood that the killer might use. There will be others. And even in this wood, I need to trawl through it for the next... what?... fifteen minutes?... half an hour?... working out the most likely spot for the guy to use.
Then it gets worse. The past comes back, and the past is so much worse than the hopeless present. I don't want to know the past. There should be enough in my life for me to be able to forget it. Enough police work, enough women, enough evenings lost in alcohol. But all those things are like taking ibuprofen for toothache. You can keep it at bay, maybe you can cover it up, but when the painkiller wears off, it's still there. Nagging. Waiting to eat into you, stab at you, to not let you forget that it exists until you've done something about it.
Except there's no dentist for the past. You can't go and sit in a small room, get an injection in your brain and undo the things that you've done.
Maybe all you have to do is face up to it. Look yourself in the mirror. Accept what you did. Maybe you have to look someone else in the face and tell them what you did.
DS Hutton Box Set Page 32
